Hudson`s Bay Company posts in the Minnesota country / Grace Lee

H U D S O N ' S BAY C O M P A N Y P O S T S I N
THE MINNESOTA COUNTRY
FUR-TRADING POSTS were relatively numerous in the Minnesota country in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth
centuries, though they belonged, not to the Hudson's Bay
Company, as is often believed, but to the Northwest Company, the X Y Company, and the American Fur Company.
Only a small number were Hudson's Bay Company posts.
That company had but few forts In the region except along
the international boundary between Canada and Minnesota
and In the Red River Valley. It is mainly with these areas,
therefore, that this paper treats.
The Hudson's Bay Company did not enter the Minnesota
field until late in the eighteenth century. The Northwest
Company pre-empted the region about the time of the American Revolution and the Hudson's Bay Company did not
at first meet Its rival's challenge In a district so far south of
its normal field of operations. Consequently, it was not
until competition became very keen that the Hudson's Bay
Company reached beyond the boundary line.
The Rainy Lake country and the Pembina region saw
the first posts of the company in the Minnesota area. In
the autumn of 1793 John McKay established a fort at the
outlet of Rainy Lake, then universally called by its French
name, Lac la Plule. It was situated on the Canadian side
of the Rainy River below the falls and the large and important fort of the Northwest Company. McKay explains
the importance of the rival fort in his diary: '•
"•McKay's Diary, September 26, 1793, in Hudson's Bay Company Archives, London, B.105/a/l. Since much of the information on which this
article is based was found in the company's archives, the author takes this
opportunity of acknowledging the kindness and courtesy of the governor
and committee in permitting the use and quotation of this material.
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H U D S O N ' S BAY C O M P A N Y
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This fort is not merely kept up for the trade it makes, its a randevous
for T h e people of the Rabarcan [Athabasca] and slave Lake as thay
Canot get to the Grand Portage and return the same year. Besides
this is the post where the Canada N . W . Company procures most of
their Canoes lor T h e inland Business.
With a single gap of some twenty years, the Hudson's
Bay Company had a post on the Rainy River until very
modern times. Though It was not actually on Minnesota
soil, its trade was with the Indians south as well as north
of the border. Moreover, it was the headquarters of several outposts, some of which were established within the
American lines. After 1797 the company seems to have
been without a post on Rainy River until 1818, when Robert
Dickson inspired the erection of one." Some missionaries
who went to the Red River In 1818 reported thus of this
fort:
T h e Hudson's Bay Company's post is not yet well organized; everything is in its infancy. It has a beautiful location, but it is not
finished; it is under construction. T h e Company did not begin to
build in this place till last spring. T h e two forts are fifteen or
twenty arpents apart.^
The diaries and reports from the Rainy River post are
numerous and very interesting. The Hudson's Bay Company's report for Lacla Plule for 1822-23, the second season
after its union with the Northwest Company, was written
by Dr. John McLoughlin and Is a mine of information about
the post. There were at the post twenty-four engages,
a guide, two Interpreters, three clerks, a chief trader, and
a chief factor, McLoughlin. These men dealt with Indians both north and south of the line, whom McLoughlin
lists in great detail. He names 107 men, 118 women, and
' Louis A. Tohill, Robert Dickson, British Fur Trader on the Upper
Mississippi, 92 (Ann Arbor, 1927) ; International Joint Commission, Final
Report on the Lake of the Woods Reference, 129 (Washington and Ottawa, 1917).
' Father Joseph N. Provencher to Bishop Joseph O. Plessis, July 6,
1818, in the Archiepiscopal Archives, Quebec. The original letter is in
French.
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POSTS OF T H E H U D S O N ' S BAY C O M P A N Y AND I T S COMPETITORS
IN T H E M I N N E S O T A COUNTRY
[From Grace Lee Nute, The Voyageur's High-way, 40 (St. Paul, 1941).]
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H U D S O N ' S BAY C O M P A N Y
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230 children, and gives the hunting capacity of every brave
mentioned as well as his hunting range, telling whether it is
north or south of the line. He records that the chief furbearing animals are martens and muskrats. " Beaver . . .
has been diminishing for these several years past, especially
on the South Side of Rainy Lake — Rainy Lake River and
Lake of the Woods."*
The journals of the Rainy River post end with the season
1837-38, but it was continued until the trading season of
1897—98, when the settler's frontier reached the Rainy
Lake area and it was no longer possible to carry on the fur
trade there. The name was changed to Fort Frances in
honor of Governor George Simpson's bride. She was with
her husband at the fort on September 25, 1830, when " a
flaccon of Spirits was broken & Spilled on the foot of the
[flag] Staff, and the Fort named Fort Frances In honour
of M'^ Simpson's Christian name." Following this ceremony, "all the Whites gave three Hearty Cheers — and
the Indians fired above 300 Shots." °
About 1830 a colorful character arrived in the Rainy
Lake region, an American Fur Company rival of whom the
diarists at Fort Frances have much to recount. This was
a well-educated Danish physician. Dr. Charles William
Wulff Borup, later a pioneer banker In St. Paul, where his
descendants are still prominent. Many were the Indians,
traders, and missionaries whom his technical skill served in
the wilderness, now at Rainy Lake, now at La Polnte on
the south shore of Lake Superior, while he continued to
trade furs as his main means of securing a livelihood." The
diarist at the company's post on Rainy Lake has many
humorous and rather disparaging yarns to recount about
' McLoughlin's report is in the Hudson's Bay Company Archives, B.
105/e/2.
° Hudson's Bay Company Archives, B. 105/a/15.
"Warren Upham and Rose B. Dunlap, Minnesota Biographies, 65
{Minnesota Historical Collections, vol. 14).
274
GRACE LEE N U T E
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this rival during the early days of his sojourn there, but they
must be taken with the proverbial grain of salt In the light
of Borup's later distinguished career. Trade rivals were
notoriously ungenerous In their estimates of one another.
Borup's fort in 1830 was on the south side of the Rainy
River, opposite the Hudson's Bay Company's post. There
an American Fur Company post had been established in
1823 by William Morrison, whose chief claim to fame rests
on his statement that he visited the true source of the Mississippi River, Lake Itasca, some thirty years before Henry
R. Schoolcraft made the officially accepted discovery in
1832. As a matter of fact, probably neither man was the
true "first" discoverer. As early as 1726 a French geographer wrote: " T h e source of the Mississippi River has
been discovered. It Is southwest of the Lake of the Assiniboin at the 48th degree of latitude and the 276th of longitude." '
The American post on the Rainy River soon had subsidiary stations at Warroad, Vermilion Lake, Grand Marais,
Grand Portage, Basswood Lake, Pembina, and elsewhere on
the border. Competition with the Hudson's Bay Company
became so keen that In 1833 a gentlemen's agreement was
entered Into by the rival companies.
One of the Hudson's Bay Company outposts of the Rainy
Lake fort was Ash, or possibly Asp, House, a little above
the mouth of Rainy River on the Minnesota side. Its site
was six hours by canoe from the Lake of the Woods, In the
reckoning of the day. It was begun in 1794, when one
building was erected. The next year at least two more
' See La Motte de Cadillac's " Relation " about the " Sea of the West,"
in a manuscript volume, number 293, part 3, p. 441, in the Edward E.
Ayer Collection, Newberry Library, Chicago. The passage quoted, which
like the rest of the volume is in French, seems to be an anonymous editorial
comment, probably by Guillaume Delisle. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries longitude was reckoned in a manner different from today.
Delisle's own maps of the period of the "Relation" show the 276th degree
not far west of Lake Itasca.
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houses were built. In his diary, McKay describes the details of building, providing one of the most adequate records
available of the steps followed In the construction of a furtrading post. How long this fort continued is uncertain.
Alexander Henry, the younger, mentions it In 1800 as "another old H . B. Co. establishment." In the spring of 1825
a company man was stationed there.*
Another outpost was located on Vermilion Lake. Most
persons have assumed that this was the large body of water
in northeastern Minnesota that still goes by that name.
Yet old maps show another Vermilion Lake, now called
Little Vermilion Lake, on the boundary between Namakan
and Loon lakes. In 1823 there was a post on this smaller
Vermilion Lake, and the chances are strong that it was there
that the Hudson's Bay Company established its fort to meet
the competition of the Northwest Company and the American Fur Company. As early as 1822 Dr. McLoughlin
wrote of the Vermilion Lake post in the past tense:
"Formerly there was a winter Post at Vermilion Lake."
It must have been on American soil, for he adds that this is
American territory and hence the company's opposition post
was located on Basswood Lake " on our side." The latter
post, he adds, was established In 1822. Its location Is given
on a manuscript map in the papers of David Thompson.
Simon McGilllvray, Jr., was the Basswood Lake trader In
1822-23; C. W. Bouck, In 1824-25.^
The diary that Donald McPherson kept at Rainy Lake
for the season 1817—18 mentions on several occasions the
' Elliott Coues, ed.. New Light on the Early History of the Greater
Northwest,
1:21, 22 ( N e w York, 1897) ; Hudson's Bay Company A r chives, B. 1 0 5 / a / 2 , B. 1 0 5 / a / 3 , B. 1 0 5 / e / 6 .
" J o h n J. Bigsby, The Shoe and Canoe, 2:259, and map, p. 346 (London,
1850) ; Hudson's Bay Company Archives, B. 105/e/2, B. 1 0 5 / e / 6 ; map of
" Lac des Bois B l a n c [ s ] , " July 9, 1823, in David Thompson's Diary, D e partment of Public Records and Archives of the Province of O n t a r i o ,
T o r o n t o . T h e Basswood Lake post was still occupied in 1841-42, according to E. H . Oliver, The Canadian Northwest,
822, 842, 858 ( O t t a w a ,
1914).
276
GRACE LEE N U T E
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post of Charles Giasson on the Lake of the Woods. As
McPherson indicates that the route to Pembina passed
Glasson's post, it is probable that this was the fort mentioned by Dr. McLoughlin In 1822-23, when he wrote:
" I n Lake of the Woods we used to keep one Post, one
year on the South Side and the next on the North, but as the
South side belongs to the Americans, we cannot go to our
former place, War road. We must get as nigh the Americans as we can." During the same season the American
trader Pierre Cote accused the Hudson's Bay Company men
of trading on the south side of the line, particularly at Roseau Lake. The post report of 1824-25 states that David
Thompson, who was then one of the commissioners surveying the international boundary line, told Dr. McLoughlin
that "we had a right to build and form an establishment
near the post of War Road . . . within a mile and a half of
the Old House, formerly occupied by the late N W Company." On May 6, 1819, there is a reference to a Mr.
Godin as clerk at Warroad, and the next season Bouck was
there. The Rainy Lake journal of that season mentions
much passing back and forth to Red River via the Warroad
post. Dr. John J. Bigsby seems to mention the other Hudson's Bay Company post on Lake of the Woods when he
writes that " W e slept near Buffalo Head. . . . Within a few
yards of our encamping-ground was a wintering-house of the
Hudson's Bay Company." This was In the summer of
1823. The exact site is shown on Bigsby's map of the
Lake of the Woods."
The region between the Lake of the Woods and Turtle
Mountain was tributary to another chief post, Pembina.
Like Rainy Lake It had its outposts and substations — Lake
Roseau, Red Lake, Grand Forks, Turtle River, Lake Traverse, and others. The first Hudson's Bay Company fort at
" Entries of January 12, 15, 1820, Hudson's Bay Company Archives, B.
105/a/7. See also B. 105/a/5, B. 105/a/6, and B. 105/e/4; and Bigsby,
Shoe and Canoe, 2:296, and map, p. 346.
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H U D S O N ' S BAY C O M P A N Y POSTS
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or near Pembina seems to have been Thomas Miller's, established about 1800 on the east side of Red River. In 1812
the company built Fort Daer at Pembina. In the 1820's
and 1830's there was an American fort at Pembina. "Inventory of Goods sent to the Big Fork of Red River —
Sept. 18"" 1829," reads an entry in a ledger kept at Lake
Traverse from 1829 to 1831. The trader appears to have
been David Aitken, who Is known to have been at Pembina
the following year." How long this post continued Is uncertain, but probably not after 1833. From that year till
1847 an agreement existed between the Hudson's Bay Company and the American Fur Company, whereby American
competition along the Minnesota boundary line was almost
completely wiped out. This agreement was made In the
spring of 1833 and renewed periodically — In 1838, 1840,
1842, 1844, and 1846. On September 26, 1847, Simpson
wrote as follows to Ramsay Crooks of the American Fur
Company:
By that agreement the American Fur Company were bound to afford
certain protection to the frontier trade of the Hudson's Bay Company, but with every disposition on the part of the Am. Fur Company
to fulfil their part of the agreement, that owing from a variety of
circumstance is now found impracticable, the allowance [£300 per
annum] usually made is therefore understood to be discontinued
from and after the past season as was arranged between us verbally
when I had the pleasure of seeing you at New York about 10 days
ago.^^
"Grace Lee Nute, " Posts in the Minnesota Fur-trading Area, 16601855," ante, 11:366, 367. A reference to the Pembina post appears in a
permit to sell whisky there and at other posts issued to William A. Aitken
by Schoolcraft on August 2, 1824. This permit and the ledger mentioned
in the text are in the Sibley Papers, in the possession of the Minnesota
Historical Society.
"^This letter is among the American Fur Company Papers, in the
possession of the New York Historical Society, New York City. The
Minnesota Historical Society has a calendar of this large collection.
Among the many letters from Sir George Simpson included among these
papers is one written on May 14, 1844, in which he states: " We have been
put to some expence and inconvenience, in the formation of an outpost
from Fort William, at Lac d'orignal, for the protection of our trade from
a small post established at that frontier by the Cleveland Company."
278
GRACE LEE N U T E
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About 1845 the settler's frontier reached Minnesota,
hitherto a fur-trader's, soldier's, and missionary's frontier.
This fact and the financial failure of the American Fur
Company in 1842 explain Its Inability to keep its pledge
after some fifteen years of scrupulous fidelity to it. Hercules L. Dousman of Prairie du Chien, Norman W. Kittson,
Henry H . Sibley, and Henry M. Rice appear to have been
responsible in large part for the recommencement of competition between the American and the British traders about
1843, following a coalition of Dousman and Sibley with
Pierre Chouteau, Jr., and Company at St. Louis in 1842.
Joseph Rolette was at Pembina even earlier than 1843, but
Kittson's arrival there in that year seems to have marked
the beginning of active competition. When it became apparent that this was no sporadic outburst of activity, but a
condition that might be expected to continue over a long
period of time, the Hudson's Bay Company resolved on a
strong fur-policing policy along the Canadian-American
boundary by means of a "cordon of posts along the whole
frontier from Fort William to Fort EUice on the Assiniboine " with " large outfits of goods, & a strong complement
of officers & men." ^^
The man chosen to oppose the Americans, Henry Fisher,
was himself an American. He was a brother of Dousman's
wife, Jane Fisher, whose first husband had been Joseph Rolette, Sr. On February 11, 1846, Fisher recorded in his
diary that he left the Red River settlement " with twelve men,
to go to Penblna in the entention of establishing a Trading
Post, with a Liscence from La Pointe to trade on the wisThe latter firm was an American competitor of the American Fur Company, and its post was on Moose Lake not far from Fort William. A
rather full discussion of the rivalry between the Hudson's Bay and American Fur companies in the 1820's is given in the International Joint Commission's Final Report on the Lake of the Woods Reference, 119-132.
"Simpson to the company, June 24, 1848, in Simpson's Outward Letterbook, 1847-48, p. 681, Hudson's Bay Company Archives. After 1846
Dousman was succeeded in the Pembina trade by his cousin, B. W. Brisbois,
and by Henry M. Rice.
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H U D S O N ' S BAY C O M P A N Y POSTS
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consin terltorle." He goes on with a description of how he
built his "small House" of logs as well as a store " a t the
Fork of Penblna." The building of these structures required only four days. The fort was appropriately named
Fort Defiance. Fisher found Kittson dull. " H e is very
quite and never speaks." " President Kittson " was his nickname."
On March 19 Fisher left Joseph Brazeau in charge of
the fort, and he himself prepared to go to Fort Ellice. In
a letter of that date addressed to Brazeau from Pembina,
Fisher writes:
Having committed to your Charge my Establishment at Penbina,
I hereby authorise you to conduct my business there during my absence,—-observing in your intercourse with the Indians all the conditions annexed to the American Licence which Empowers me to trade
with them at Penbina in the Territory of Wisconsin. Of the Licence
I will hand you a certified copy: and the conditions referred to are
Shortly these: that you do not trade the Indians traps or medals or
Guns nor supply them with spirituous Liquors.
Fisher's correspondence reveals that this letter was prepared for him by the Hudson's Bay Company factor at Fort
Garry.
When Kittson charged that Fisher's license would not be
good unless the latter got his trade goods from the United
States, he accused Kittson of "not geting all his supplies
from the United States that almost every week he was geting some supplies from Red River Settlement even he got
Rum and gave it to Indians." Kittson denied the charges,
but later entries in Fisher's diary seem to substantiate some
of them. In letters written after Fisher's departure, Brazeau speaks of the Hudson's Bay Company post on the Lake
of the Woods and its wealth of furs; lists the furs received
from Roseau Lake and the goods sent there; and tells of
Kittson's threat to " take a marten for each wolf that they
" Fisher's Diary is among the Fisher Papers in the Archiepiscopal Archives at St. Boniface, Manitoba. The Minnesota Historical Society has
a photographic copy.
280
GRACE LEE N U T E
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[the Hudson's Bay Company] get off of the American lands,"
and of his warning to look out for " squawls next year." ^^
The Hudson's Bay Company post at Pembina in 1849
was situated " about two hundred yards from the line on
their territory"; it then consisted merely of a "small
'shanty,'" but there were "under erection very extensive
buildings." In that year a United States military expedition under Major Samuel Woods arrived and examined the
place with a view to establishing a military post there or
elsewhere In the valley In order to control the trading situation and the buffalo hunts of British half-breeds on American territory.^' Fort Abercrombie, farther up the valley,
was erected a little later; and many years later Fort George
H. Thomas, afterward Fort Pembina, was established at
Pembina.'^'
Many of the inhabitants of the Red River settlement
found the Hudson's Bay Company's prices and regulations
unattractive and smuggled their furs to Kittson or his men.
A rather humorous narrative of such a smuggling party has
been preserved In Peter Garrioch's papers.^* The period
'^ The letters quoted are in the Fisher Papers.
"Samuel Woods, Pembina Settlement, 19 (31 Congress, 1 session.
House Executive Documents, no. 51—serial 577). In addition to
Woods's report of November 10, 1849, this document includes a letter of
November 30, 1848, from Rice to J. E. Fletcher; a letter of Father Georges
A. Belcourt, dated at Pembina, August 20, 1849; and other items that
throw much light on British-American competition along the entire northern boundary of Minnesota. Belcourt refers to four American " posts of
Red lake, of Reed lake, of Pembina, and at the source of Pembina river or
Turtle Mountain " ; Fletcher, in a letter of February 12, 1849, mentions
" four trading posts on or near our northern boundary line "; and Rice's
posts on Vermilion and Rainy lakes are noted. See p. 4, 37.
" " Fort Pembina " file, 1870-1903, in Abandoned Military Reservations
Papers, General Land Office, Washington. The fort was established on
July 8, 1870, by General Orders no. 1; its name was changed on September 6, 1870, by order no. 55 ; and it was ordered sold on December 11, 1897,
according to a letter from Thomas Ryan to the Commissioner of the General Land Office, September 13, 1897.
" Peter Garrioch, " Seven Days' Experience of the Pleasures of Smuggling"; Garrioch's Diary, May 8, 9, 1846. Typewritten copies of these
items are owned by Mr. Harold Knox of Winnipeg, who placed them at
the disposal of the writer.
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H U D S O N ' S BAY C O M P A N Y P O S T S
281
seems to have been May, 1846. Andrew McDermott and
James Sinclair were the leaders of the smuggling element,
which became very threatening in the end. Not only did
the settlers want an opportunity to sell their furs immediately across the line, but more important, they wanted to
continue the cart traffic that had grown to large proportions
by 1849, when Woods's expedition met ninety-eight wooden
carts en route to St. Paul. A test case of smuggling had
occurred the previous spring. Guillaume Sayer and three
other half-breeds were arraigned at that time before the
court of Assiniboia charged with illegal traffic In furs. So
electric was the atmosphere and so threatening were the
settlers under the leadership of Louis Riel, the father of
another rebel of the same name, that the judge felt It expedient to slip away unnoticed. Though the jury found
Sayer guilty, he escaped punishment, and the half-breeds
considered that they had won their objective, free trade.
" Henceforth the company's fur monopoly In the Red River
settlement was a thing of the past, and the creaking Red
River carts continued to make their way over the level plains
and down the valley of the Mississippi to St. Paul." "
Other Hudson's Bay Company posts in the Red River
Valley were numerous. In October and early November,
1812, John McLeod, with "Bastonnais" Pangman as his
interpreter, built a post at Turtle River as an outpost of
Pembina. It is located by Captain John Pope of the
Woods expedition, who noted it as he passed.^" In 1818
and 1819 Louis Bellair, or Bellain, was the company's
trader at Red Lake, with a post probably on the west shore.
" An excellent account of the controversy between the Red River settlers
and the Hudson's Bay Company is given in John P. Pritchett, " Some Red
River Fur-trade Activities," ante, 5:415—423. See also Woods, Pembina
Settlement, 9-36 (serial 577).
™ McLeod's Journal, which is in the Public Archives of Canada at
Ottawa, M 201, was called to the writer's attention by Mr. William
Douglas of Winnipeg. The Turtle River post is located in Pope's Field
Notes, 1:11. A copy of these notes is in the Alfred J. Hill Papers, in the
possession of the Minnesota Historical Society.
282
GRACE LEE N U T E
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He was drowned, and by February 17, 1820, Peter Powell
was the trader there. Duncan Graham of the Hudson's
Bay Company had a post near the Wild Rice River prior
to 1819, for on November 4 of that year John Bourke proceeded "along Riviere a FoUe" and on November 5 he
" pass'd the river and encamped opposite M ' Graham's
old wintering place." In 1849 Captain Pope noted the remains of an "English fort twenty years old" on the Red
River above Pembina and just below and opposite the mouth
of Black River; hence the fort was on the Minnesota side
of the river. The same officer noted the remains of " an
old English fort" just north of the mouth of the Red Lake
River.'^
During the winter of 1819-20 Graham, Bourke, and
Joseph Renville maintained a post for the Hudson's Bay
Company on or near Lake Traverse, and the following season Bourke and Renville were there.^^ Dickson had maintained a post In the vicinity since about 1800, and as he
seems to have been Bourke's superior in the period from
1819 to 1821, it may be conjectured that Bourke's post was
near Dickson's. That, from all reports, was on lot 4 In
section 2 of township 125 N., range 49 W. There is some
evidence, however, that Bourke's post was on the height of
land between Lake Traverse and Big Stone Lake.^'
By 1820 the arrangements between the company on one
side and Renville and Graham on the other for a joint trade
near Lake Traverse had become unsatisfactory. In that
°' Pritchett, ante, 5: 408; Bourke's " Journal of the Transactions in the
Sioux district," 1819-20, in Hudson's Bay Company Archives; Pope's
Field Notes, 1:3, 2:51, 16:23, 24, in Hill Papers.
^^ Bourke's "Journal," 1819-20, in Hudson's Bay Company Archives.
For a sketch of Renville, see Gertrude W. Ackermann, " Joseph Renville
of Lac qui Parle," ante, 12: 231-246.
^ See Tohill, Robert Dickson, for a biography of the trader. His post
is located by Nute, ante, 11: 379, and by James Colhoun in his diary of
1823, p. 117 and map, p. 113. Colhoun states that " Rainville established
this trading post six years ago." The Minnesota Historical Society has
a copy of this diary.
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HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY POSTS
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year Bourke was given charge of the Sioux district, with
Renville acting merely as a trader. Graham seems to have
entered the service of the Northwest Company in 1820 and
to have established a rival post on or near Lake Traverse.
In 1821, the year of the union of the Hudson's Bay and
Northwest companies, Renville was put in charge at Lake
Traverse with Joseph Jeffries as an accountant. Both men
left the Hudson's Bay Company In 1822, Renville to become
the leader in a new Columbia Fur Company. The Hudson's Bay Company, realizing that the trade of the Sioux
district was carried on at a loss and that Selkirk and Dickson's plans for the Red River Valley were impossible to
carry through, withdrew the post in 1823.^*
The underlying reason for the extension of the company's
trading ventures so far into American territory as Lake
Traverse is closely Identified with the story of Dickson's
career. After thirty years or so of Independent trading In
the Sioux countries of the MInnesota-Iowa-Dakota area, he
entered the service of the Hudson's Bay Company after the
War of 1812, a conflict In which he led his Indians and voyageurs with distinction on the British side. By 1816 he
was closely associated with Lord Selkirk. The reason Is
not far to seek. Dickson had been active during the war
and was thereafter regarded with suspicion by the United
States government. Hence, It was difficult for him to
serve as an American trader. Selkirk had a grant of land
from the Hudson's Bay Company extending up the Red
River to the height of land between Lake Traverse and Big
Stone Lake. There was hope that this point of land jutting
deep into American territory would remain British, though
the surrounding country was American. Selkirk, representing the Hudson's Bay Company, was engaged in bitter
strife with the Northwest Company and was endeavoring,
through his colony on the lower reaches of the Red River,
'^Reports, box 524/517, p. 31-33; Letterbook no. 620, p. 40; Simpson's
Reports, box 1, no. 588, p. 46-49, Hudson's Bay Company Archives.
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GRACE LEE N U T E
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to thwart the aims of the Nor'Westers to capture the Athabasca and Pacific slope trade. His purpose was twofold:
first, he must supply company men going to the contested
areas with food, and cheap food must thus be produced In
the interior instead of being imported at ruinous cost for
freight; second, the Northwest Company would find a bar
to its trade when a colony was planted directly athwart its
line of communication from the Red River to the Missouri
and the Saskatchewan, the area where pemmican was produced.^° Selkirk saw in Dickson the man he needed — a
Britisher in sympathy with the Hudson's Bay Company,
acquainted with the area and Its inhabitants, allied by marriage to the Sioux, possessed of half-breed children already
prominent in the region, and an honest and capable businessman.
So, as the war closed, the plan was hatched for making
the upper Red River Valley an agricultural colony under the
direction of Dickson, who was to make it also the center of
the fur trade for a large area. To that end he was to import all the Indians he could induce to move there and to
employ many well-established fur traders. So Dickson
spent the winter of 1816—17 at his home on the eastern
shore of Lake Traverse maturing his plans.^° Goods were
to be purchased from the Hudson's Bay Company and furs
were to be sold to it. Buffalo skins were to be secured and
the wool from them woven into cloth in a factory established
in the valley. An experimental farm, supported largely by
Selkirk, would take the lead In the agricultural colony.
Proof that Dickson was in a measure successful is to be
found in the diary kept by Bourke at Lake Traverse In
1820-21. It discloses that sixty or so of Little Crow's
band of Indians, also known as the " Gens du Lac," formerly
^ For an authoritative sketch of Selkirk's role in the feud between the
Northwest and Hudsons' Bay companies, see Chester A. Martin's introduction to George Simpson, Journal of Occurrences in the Athabasca Department, 1820 and 1821 (London, 1938).
'"Tohill, Robert Dickson, 88.
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HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY POSTS
285
inhabitants of the Mendota region at the junction of the
Minnesota and Mississippi, removed to the vicinity of
Bourke's post in 1817. He says of these Indians: "They
are always ready for any thing but hunting and this they
have no thought of particularly as they have an Idea that
Col Dickson Graham and Rinville as their relations can
support them." ^^
Bourke also shows that he and such other experienced
traders as Powell, Graham, Renville, William Laidlaw,
Frangois and Narcisse Frenler, and others were imported
from posts as distant as Sault Ste. Marie to engage in the
fur trade. Thus Bourke's record disproves in a measure
Dr. Louis A. Tohill's conclusion:
O n his way to Michilimackinac from Lake Traverse in the spring of
1817 Dickson spent some time in the vicinity of Prairie du Chien
trying to persuade the Sioux, Sauk, Menominee, and the Chippewa
to follow him to the Red River and settle there. Just how successful he was it is not possible to say, although it seems that comparatively few Indians were willing to leave their ancestral fires to go into
a new and untried country. Nor does it seem that he was more
successful in convincing his former associates of the advantages of the
change. H e did make arrangements with Lawe at Green Bay to
take goods to the Minnesota and then pass on to trade at some small
unnamed streams where furs abounded, according to Dickson's information. O n his way to his appointed station, which was probably
on the headwaters of the Mississippi, Lawe was to supply Faribault
and Renville with goods.^^
Cattle for the experimental farm were purchased in the
United States and driven up to Lake Traverse. In his
diary for March 14 and April 12, 1821, Bourke notes that
Laidlaw was on his way toward Prairie du Chien " t o meet
the cattle expected from thence." He was apprehensive
that Colonel Josiah Snelling would not let him pass the new
fort at the mouth of the Minnesota, and his fears were
realized.
In 1817 Selkirk met the Indians of the lower Red River
^Bourke's "Journal," November 2, 1820, in Hudson's Bay Company
Archives.
^Tohill, Robert Dickson, 89, 93, 94.
286
GRACE LEE N U T E
SEPT.
Valley and obtained a lease of their lands from the mouth
of the Red River southward to the Grand Forks and westward as far as the junction of the Muskrat and Assiniboine
rivers. At Grand Forks was to be Dickson's settlement of
Indians and fur traders.
The arrangement with the Indians brought loud protests from the Americans. The
Indian agent at Prairie du Chien wrote thus on February 16,
1818:
W h a t do you suppose, sir, has been the result of the passage through
my agency, of this British nobleman? (Lord Selkirk.) T w o entire
bands, and part of a third, all Sioux, have deserted us and joined
Dickson, who has distributed to them large quantities of Indian
presents, together with flags, medals, etc. Knowing this, what must
have been my feelings on hearing that his lordship had met with a
favorable reception at St. Louis. T h e newspapers announcing his
arrival and general Scottish appearance, all tend to discompose me;
believing as I do, that he is plotting with his friend Dickson, our
destruction — sharpening the savage scalping knife, and colonizing
a tract of country, so remote as that of the Red river, for the purpose,
no doubt, of monopolizing the fur and peltry trade of this river, the
Missouri and their waters — a trade of the first importance to our
western states and territories. A courier, who had arrived a few days
since, confirms the belief that Dickson is endeavoring to undo what
I have done, and secure to the British government the affections of
the Sioux, and subject the Northwest Company to his lordship. . . .
Dickson, as I have before observed, is situated near the head of the
St. Peter's, to which place he transports his goods from Selkirk's Red
river establishment, in carts made for the purpose. T h e trip is performed in five days, sometimes less. He is directed to build a fort
on the highest land between Lac du Travers, and Red river, which
he supposes will be the established line between the two countries.
This fort will be defended by twenty men, with two small pieces of
artillery.^^
It may be that Dickson later altered his plan and made
Pembina Instead of Grand Forks the place for settlement.
At any rate. Catholic missionaries were secured after nearly
a century of neglect of this area on the part of the church,
and the mission of St. Frangols Xavier was established In
'° Edward D. Neill, " Indian Trade, A Sketch of the Early Trade and
Traders of Minnesota," in Minnesota Historical Society, Annals, 1852,
p. 44.
1941
H U D S O N ' S BAY C O M P A N Y POSTS
287
1818 at Pembina. There in the next four years, about
Fort Daer, grew up a settlement of voyageurs, half-breeds,
French-Canadian families imported by Lord Selkirk from
Lower Canada, Swiss Protestant families attracted by the
earl's propaganda in their native land, and others. A
church and a school were established. A resident missionary kept anxious care of the morals of the community.
Even a bishop was appointed for the Red River country
and its neighborhood, the first evidence under the British
regime that a Catholic hierarchy was to be allowed to develop In Canada. Dickson's and Powell's daughters attended the Catholic school at Pembina and entered the
Catholic church. On May 21, 1819, Selkirk wrote Dickson
that he was planning to purchase lands of the Sioux on Red
River within the American boundary and needed his help.'"
But Dickson and Selkirk had not reckoned with events
and personalities that brought their cherished plans to
naught. Congress passed an act in 1816 excluding foreigners from the fur trade. In 1818 a convention was
agreed upon between the United States and England that
set the long-disputed boundary line in the Red River Valley
and westward to the Rocky Mountains at the forty-ninth
parallel and made a large part of Lord Selkirk's land grant
null and void. A military fort was established In 1819 at
the junction of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers and an
Indian agent was appointed for the area. The commander
of the fort and the Indian agent, Lawrence Taliaferro,
were more than conscientious in the performance of their
duty of guarding the frontier against the Indians and British
influence. The Earl of Selkirk died in 1820. Grasshoppers destroyed the crops in the Red River Valley in 1818
and 1821. The Northwest and the Hudson's Bay companies united In 1821. All these events conspired against
the success of the Hudson's Bay Company's posts In the
"•Tohill, Robert Dickson, 9 4 ; Bulger Papers,
14, in Public Archives of Canada.
1817-1822, vol. 2, p. 12-
288
GRACE LEE N U T E
SEPT.
Red River Valley, of the settlements at Grand Forks and
Pembina, and of "Hayfield," the experimental farm, which
was abandoned in 1822. Dickson himself died in 1823,
just as an expedition of the United States army under Major
Stephen A. Long started down the Red River Valley. Its
purpose was, in part, to learn how many of the Hudson's
Bay Company's men were still in the valley and what they
were doing there; and to determine exactly where the fortyninth parallel crossed the valley. The company withdrew
its posts from American soil at Pembina and at Lake Traverse and concentrated its attention on the new posts to the
east that have already been mentioned.
On the route to Pembina from the Lake of the Woods
lay Roseau Lake, frequently called Reed Lake. Augustin
Nolin, the Hudson's Bay company trader at Pembina, had
a post there in 1830 under the direction of a man probably
named Alexander Groundmaster.'^ A relatively late establishment of the company was made there about 1846 as an
outpost of Pembina. On February 17, 1846, Fisher recorded In his diary: "got four of my men Prepared to start
tomorrow for Lac des Ros[o]." The entry for February
27 reads: " M y men arrived from Lac des Roso every
thing Is quite and tranquIU anough there." On March 4
Fisher himself went to Roseau Lake. John Coming, or
Cummings, was evidently in charge there and he had three
men with him. A man named La Rocque seems to have
been his opponent. On March 5 Fisher writes that his men
from Roseau Lake report " that Larocque has given liquor
to the Indians on that account has got the Indians skins for
before he tryed to get their furs he was refussed but as soon
as he gave the Liquor he got the whole of what they had."
In 1848 Thomas McDermott was named postmaster at
the Hudson's Bay Company fort at Roseau Lake, but he
'^ Entry of February 1, 1831, in Hudson's Bay Company Archives, B.
105/a/15. The Roseau Lake post is located on a map in Parliamentary
Papers Relative to the Exploration of the Country between Lake Superior
and the Red River Settlement, 100 (London, 1859).
1941
H U D S O N ' S BAY C O M P A N Y POSTS
289
died on November 28. His successor for that year is not
known. Kittson does not mention him in the detailed letters that he wrote to Sibley in 1848 and 1849, though he
does speak of the richness of "Lac des Roseau and Lake of
the Woods " for lynx pelts. Kittson has this to say of the
situation at the three chief posts of the area, Pembina,
Roseau Lake, and Turtle Mountain:
T h e H . B. C° gentry are drawing in their horns a little. When the
gentlemen in Charge at present first came up he was to play the very
D
1 with me, but he has found out his mistake and has been candid
enough to own to me that it is not such an easy job as he at first expected,
and I shall try and make it a little more and more difficult, he is however a very fine man so far and I have no doubt of getting along with
him without quarreling.'^
In 1850, however, competition had so far relaxed that the
Hudson's Bay Company removed its Roseau Lake post to
Shoal Lake, an arm of the Lake of the Woods.''
With the victory of the free traders of Red River over
the Hudson's Bay Company in 1849, it was obvious that
the day of the company's posts in the Minnesota country
was past, particularly as that year witnessed also the formation of Minnesota Territory, which extended beyond the
Red River to the Missouri. Indeed, the day of all great
fur-trading companies was past in Minnesota. Though
trapping continued to be a prosperous business in many parts
of the territory and the state for a number of years, and
even to this day In a few places, the year 1850 may be regarded as the beginning of a new economic era in the Minnesota country.
GRACE L E E N U T E
MINNESOTA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
ST. PAUL
'^ Minutes of Council, Northern Department, Norway House, June,
1848, p. 214, Hudson's Bay Company Archives; Kittson to Sibley, November 11, 1848, Sibley Papers.
"'William Sinclair to Simpson, February 1, 1850, in Simpson Inward
Correspondence, Correspondence and Minutes of Council, Hudson's Bay
Company Archives.
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